


we'll float in space, just you and i

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26493847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: “I was meaning to ask you,” he says, which seems to be the only  way he knows how to start conversations with her lately: carefully, after worrying for weeks.
Relationships: Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto/Caleb Widogast, caleb/PINING
Comments: 11
Kudos: 108





	we'll float in space, just you and i

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr for the request: "could you write a widobrave drabble about caleb being (irrationally) jealous of yeza? preferably with veth/caleb not in a relationship but with unresolved romantic feelings between them 🖤"
> 
> which is like, 60% of how this story turned out, so go me!

Veth is rifling through his spell components, and Caleb half watches, half reads: a quiet afternoon, they’re leaving in the morning, and there are bags to be repacked and supplies refilled. “Can I have this?” she asks, holding up a bit of something —

“Yes, of course.” He doesn’t even look.

Yeza comes around the corner, pushing his glasses up his nose — “Oh, there you are!”

“Uh-huh. Everything okay, honey?” she asks, pocketing the vial.

“Uh-huh, sure, just wanted to know if you wanted to go out —“ “Of course I do!” “Well, Luc has his heart set on the beach, and I know—“ “The _what_!?”

And Caleb half smiles and pretends not to listen to the way they talk over one another, the way Yeza rolls his eyes before Veth even yelps, the way she interrupts before he even asks.

“Well, okay. Lebby, do you mind?” she asks.

“Have a good time,” he says, lifting his book slightly as if to say: _I am busy_ , and he doesn’t think at all about how in the past, she would have chosen to spend her morning with him; how in the past, she would have invited him along.

Being ‘Veth’ is good for her, in a way that it almost hurts Caleb to see: not from pain but from joy, the way she absently sips water at dinner, the way she stands, doesn’t jump or flinch at the slightest touch, quieter but no longer biting at her lips or nails or yelping her reactions. Her skin seems to glow; her eyes bright. Her cheeks dimpled.

He had worried, a part of him, the cold and twisted and selfish part. That he would no longer know her, no longer recognize her, that the transformation was in fact a death, a farewell, a goodbye. There was no denying the differences, and he’d almost — nearly accepted it, written it off as for the best, crystalized Nott in his heart as a memory alongside that of his parents — lost, destroyed, killed at his hands and remembered — replaced by someone new, someone different, who looked and moved and even _smelled_ like another woman, a cheap replacement — no; no, a happy ending, but still a goodbye. He had come to accept it, was prepared — for the moment of sunset, of farewell, closing the book on that day in a jail cell that leaked in the early spring rain —

It had not been as clean as that.

For all that he’d searched, Veth was not Nott, in look or feel or shape.

But despite all that he’d feared and pleaded with himself to accept —

Nott _was_ Veth, in every smile and less-than-subtle expression and cackling laugh. No: Veth was more than Nott, happier and unafraid and content in a way that he’d not seen from her, that he wished for for himself, but he hadn’t lost her after all, and…

He hadn’t lost her —

It’s just…

Nott wouldn’t have left him for a beach.

It’s selfish and cruel of him, and he doesn’t say it. Just as he doesn’t say a word whenever Veth touches Yeza’s arm, smiles at Yeza, calls him _honey_ or _sweetie_ or _cutiepie_. You don’t say things like that, he wants to tell her. Except that obviously she does.

She comes back later with her family, red cheeked with sand on her ankles and a skirt full of seashells, Luc hanging on her and tripping her and looking up at his mother with awe. Caleb watches her from the window and smiles to see it — he must, he does, it makes him think of other boys and other mothers, skirts full of pinecones to throw popping into the fire — and too at Veth’s expression, happy and bewildered at once.

She joins him and Beau a few minutes later, divested of shells but no less sandy. Flops onto the duvet with Beau. “God, you _nerds_ ,” she says.

“Fuck you,” says Beau fondly.

“Did you find anything out?” From her pocket, Veth takes a little notebook, flipping pages — Beau reaches for it and they have a lightning-fast scuffle before Veth hands it and her list of names over.

“Dammit, I _knew_ I had the spelling wrong,” Beau mutters, comparing the notebook to her own diary, and then flipping through her book from the start once more.

Veth hops off the duvet and goes over to Caleb’s chair. “Have you moved all day?”

“Well —“ It’s a nice chair, by the window, with a good view of the beach. He smiles, but it falters. “Where are your husband and your son?”

“Bath.” She gets up on the rung of the chair behind Caleb so she can peer over his shoulder, pressing herself to his back, chin on his arm. She’s softer than Nott ever was, and warm from the sun, smelling like salt and sharp medicines and like _Veth_ , not Nott. It’s just sweat and soap and BO, he tells himself. Why should he miss it?

He tilts the book back, so she can read it if she chooses to. “You might be able to help,” he says. “We’ve been scanning books for hours looking for our missing name, and more eyes are always better.”

She makes an attempt at propping her arm up on his shoulder: a lock of hair falls from behind her ear and against his cheek.

Caleb’s heart is racing, although he isn’t quite sure why: it isn’t the first or most intimate contact they’ve shared. He has finished reading the page he is on, but finds himself loathe to turn it— waiting for Veth to make some move or sign, unable to see her face despite her closeness, the way he can feel her breath in his ear.

“I found it!” Beau suddenly yelps, leaping upright from her slump: she stands up, holding her book, and reads the relevant paragraph aloud, and then a second time: Caleb is preoccupied and doesn’t notice when Veth slips away, goes to read Beau’s passage for herself.

(That is a lie. He notices it. Down to the second.)

They’re on the road again the next day, teleporting and then buckling down for a long, long hike. Lately, Caleb has always wondered if Veth will stay behind again, if he’ll watch her fade from the outside of a teleportation spell, but she says nothing when they gather up in the morning and so neither does he.

By afternoon, Jester is already asking if she’ll want to send a message home tonight. “No, I think I’m okay,” Veth says vaguely.

“But I bet you miss Yeza and your kid!”

“Well, sure, but it’s not like we’ll get much of a message across in one spell and like the five words left over after the singing, and they’ll be fine for a night.”

“I’m really good at sending messages, you know,” Jester says, poking Veth’s cheek in mock offense, and they tease one another a bit, until Veth, laughing, retorts: _I’m not that clingy, okay!?_

That night they stop to rest, and Veth, as ever, sits next to him as they have dinner. “I was meaning to ask you,” he says, which seems to be the only way he knows how to start conversations with her lately: carefully, after worrying for weeks.

“Is everything okay?”

“Ah, yes…” He’s careful how he asks: he is aware that everyone else are listening in. “It’s just, it is hard for you to leave your family. I don’t want you to regret — you are still okay with it?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” she says, a little flippantly, a little too firm, but enough to stave off the more easily persuaded of the party.

And so he brings it up again a few hours later, when they’re alone and it’s time for bed. “It’s simply that Jester is right; you miss your family.”

“Of course I do,” she says, unbraiding her hair and brushing it with her fingers, smoothing out the waves and knots, her hair black and thick and shining in the dim light of the fire. “But it’s not like I wouldn’t miss you guys, and you need me.”

“So does your son.”

She begins to put her hair back in plaits, frowning.

“N— “ He catches himself. “Veth. You know I do not _want_ you to leave. None of us do. But I worry — I do not want you to cause yourself unhappiness out of a feeling of obligation.”

“You could say that either way,” she says, her voice uncharacteristically soft. More firmly: “I’ve made up my mind, Lebby. I feel like shit whenever I leave Luc, I feel like the world’s worst… but I’m _happy_ when we’re, you know, _saving_ people, and fighting monsters, and doing crazy things, and Yeza knows that.”

She ties off one plait and starts the other.

“He loves you very much,” Caleb says softly, at once feeling defeated and bitterly, darkly happy.

“I love him very much,” she says primly. “And hell, he was okay with the whole —“ she gestures at her face— “ _teeth_ thing, and that alone is like…”

 _I was okay with it as well._ He doesn’t say it. He hates himself for thinking it. He forces a smile. “Yes. I hadn’t thought you as the pet-name type,” he teases.

“Oh, that?” she laughs. “I’m pretty sure we started doing that ironically, but it’s cute, right? It’s fun.”

He wants to say something, but his mind and courage both fail him. “Well, we will return to them soon enough.”

She looks at him sideways. “Hey, can I ask _you_ something?”

“Of course.”

She plays with her second plait. Then grins. “What would you do if I called _you_ honey? Or sweetcheeks. Or—“ She laughs at his face, the redness he feels. “I’m just kidding, Lebby.”

“I - I know.”

Still. For all the embarrassment…

She yawns, stretching. “Okay, I’m going to sleep. Don’t stay up too late reading… _sweetiepie_.”

“Ah… ah, ja. Good night.” He almost says something else; loses his nerve.

“What?” she says, sensing his hesitation.

Forces it through his throat: the word and the joking tone and teasing half smile. In Zemnian, where it’s easier and he can better deny: “ _Sleep well, my dear._ ”

She’s quiet. Smiles, looking almost shy. Hesitates just before she leaves the room. “You know… I miss you just as much when I stay,” she says, halfway in the shadows, almost too hard to see.

“I know,” he admits, feeling warmer than he has in days. “Sleep well, Veth.”


End file.
